


Not Bullet Casings or Nostalgia

by voleuse



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-03 01:59:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2834012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voleuse/pseuds/voleuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>You are whatever’s the opposite of façade</em>.<br/>Joan likes surprises even less than Moriarty does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Bullet Casings or Nostalgia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [athersgeo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/athersgeo/gifts).



> Set after for 2.12.

The call came three weeks after Kayden Fuller was kidnapped. Joan was brewing tea when Sherlock’s phone rang, and he listened to the speaker for twelve seconds before handing the phone to her.

“I can’t,” he said, curt. “But you should.”

*

The coffee shop hummed with quiet chatter, punctuated by the occasional laugh. Mrs. Fuller had ordered tea, but she held the cup in her hands without sipping.

Joan took a polite sip of her own tea, then set it down on the table between them. “Mrs. Fuller—“

“Allison, please,” she interrupted.

“Allison.” Joan smiled. “I know you’re worried, but the police consider this an open case, still, as does the FBI.” 

“They won’t find her,” Allison replied. Her hands shook, the tea splashing onto the table before she set the mug down. “They can’t.”

Joan reached over, dabbing the spill with a napkin. “What makes you say that?”

Allison laughed, and it was a quick, sharp sound. “My husband,” she paused for a moment, “Uriah knew more than I did, about Kayden’s mother. I only knew _enough_.”

“Moriarty,” Joan confirmed.

“She used a different name, before, but yes.” Allison laced her fingers together. “I know that Kayden is safe, wherever she is. I know I won’t get her back. I just want to talk to her.”

Joan turned over the request in her mind, found it all sharp edges and cottony possibilities. “So you want—“

“I want you to talk to, to Moriarty,” Allison said. “They won’t even tell me where she is, but you can find out.” She blinked rapidly, a tear spilling over. “She’s Kayden’s mother, but so am I. I want, I need to talk to my daughter. She’s all I have left.”

“All right.” Joan nodded. “I’ll try.”

*

Mattoo was still in recovery, but his office directed Joan to another agent, who directed her to another office. She persisted, using affable sincerity when people seemed amenable to the possibilities, and steel logic when they tried to obfuscate. Once, she asked Captain Gregson to put in a call to an old friend he had, working in the State Department, and once, she sat down with Sherlock to map out the government holdings in the Tri-State area.

Eight days after she’d met with Allison Fuller, Joan was escorted through a run-down courtyard of an abandoned hotel near Bridgeport, past the peeling paint of the registration desk, and into an elevator that was spotless and shining. The agent escorting her, Telling, pressed her palm to the reader, nodding when the screen blinked clear, and the elevator began to ascend.

“I’ll wait in the atrium,” Telling said. “If you need anything—“

“I’ll shout,” Joan affirmed.

The elevator slowed, then stopped. They walked through a room filled with medical supplies and metal folding chairs, then another one, empty save for a table, and a telephone. The next door was steel. Telling fiddled with a keypad for a moment, and it slid open. 

“Thanks,” Joan said, and stepped through.

The space was smaller than the previous room had been, as were the canvases lining the walls. Moriarty was seated on a green chaise lounge, idly flipping through pages of a newspaper as Joan entered. 

“Lovely to see you,” she said, looking up.

Joan raised an eyebrow. “Can’t say the same.”

Moriarty set the newspaper aside, and Joan caught a glimpse of the wounds on her hands, still healing. “They’ve taken away my paints,” Moriarty said. She pointed towards a small table and easel. “I’m restricted to watercolor and pastels, now.”

“That happens,” Joan responded, “when you strangle an agent and murder three people.”

Moriarty smiled. “You are quite charming,” she said. “I can see why Sherlock has allowed himself to grow so accustomed to you.” She tilted her head, her gaze skipping past Joan.

“He’s not with me,” Joan said. “And he’s not behind the door, watching us.”

Moriarty’s smile disappeared. “What do you want, then?”

“Allison Fuller misses her daughter,” Joan replied. 

“ _My_ daughter,” Moriarty said, “is well-cared for, and much more difficult to find.”

“And,” Joan said, “I imagine, confused and lonely. Does she know Uriah Fuller is dead? Did she know the people who raised her weren’t her parents?”

Moriarty flicked the fingers of her left hand. “You’ll find I’m rather bored by emotional appeals.” 

Joan watched her. The fingers of Moriarty’s right hand were flexing, and her posture had bent by a few degrees.

“Allison Fuller just wants to talk with Kayden,” Joan said. “I’m sure Kayden would find it comforting.”

Moriarty looked away. “I won’t tell you where she is.”

“But you could arrange a phone call,” Joan said.

“It might be a possibility,” Moriarty said. “With some conditions.”

Joan folded her arms. “Such as?”

*

Twelve days later, Joan sat with Allison Fuller in the police station. “Since it’s the number for a prepaid cellphone,” Joan explained, “it will be difficult for the police to trace. But we’ll try.”

Allison nodded, her eyes fastened to the phone, her palm already pressed next to it, ready to dial. “I just want to talk to her,” she said again, quietly.

Joan reached forward, touching Allison’s hand briefly, then stood. “I’ll give you some privacy,” she said, and stepped out of the room, closing the door behind her.

Captain Gregson met her in the hallway. “We tracked down the store where the phone was purchased,” he said. “One of the employees remembered a strange transaction from that day—someone who came in and bought twelve prepaid phones with cash.”

Joan considered it. “It wasn’t Moriarty.”

“We’re bringing the guy in to talk to a sketch artist,” Gregson said, “but he said it was a man, maybe five-nine, Indian or maybe Pakistani accent.”

“Another person in her network,” Joan says. “Or someone she paid to run an errand.”

“She was out for more than four hours,” Gregson said. “Think she’ll give us the other numbers?” 

Joan looked back at the conference room. Allison was clutching one hand to her heart, smiling as she talked on the phone. “Maybe,” Joan said. “We made a deal.”

*

That night, Joan went back to the coffeeshop where she had met Allison. She bought a chocolate croissant and an Earl Grey tea.

She sighed, and pulled out the stationery set she had bought, right after her meeting with Moriarty. She smoothed the paper out, needlessly, and began to write the first letter.

 _Moriarty,_ she began.

**Author's Note:**

> Title and summary adapted from Erika Meitner’s _[By the Attachments with Which We Come](%E2%80%9D)_.


End file.
